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Comment by nathancheng | Hacker News Reader

As AI models get better, the need for owning your own data becomes increasingly important, and I'll tell you why.

Fundamentally, personal data should be owned by the person. It's that simple. Current frontier labs are taking our data and using it to develop stronger models.

Eventually these models will think for us. Instead of AI working for us, we will end up working for AI. That's the moment when we'll realize we've lost what it means to be human. And maybe then it will be to late.

Own your data, own your compute. AGI will have no chance against us if we keep what it means to be ourselves... to ourselves.

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The counter argument is an expansion of ‘no man is an island’. Everything you might try to liberate as ‘yours and yours alone’ is simply a fragment of ‘The Commons’ that many before you have created and enabled, which you are now attempting to temporarily appropriate for your personal discretion. Sovereignty of an individual is a contradiction of ‘society’, not a facet of it, and its pursuit merely an unambitious form of plundering.

I am uncomfortable with this view yet it is challenging to rigorously defend against. Well-considered attacks against it are welcomed.

Your argument has ground, and is well written. After all, we are inherently designed to share our own experiences with others, and there will be no society without this function. It's what makes us human. It's what allows us to feel belonging.

But I would argue that sovereignty of individuals is in fact an important facet a soceity, and not a contradiction. The greatest minds have pushed forward by questioning the status quo. What we each bring to the table (and choose to bring to the table by our own free will) is where humanity shines.

I do see your point that the singularity may be inevitable. Companies work best when every person contributes to the fragment of "The Commons" as you say. It is definitely a matter of perspective, and I appreciate we have different ones. There's room for both in a world where extremists are the ones who hurt us in the end.

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